Racer Z

Our new VTO Retro-4 wheels arrived Saturday while we were at the track. These are the 15x7 zero offset. Man-o-man do they look good. We won't be able to mount them up for a couple of weeks yet.
Here's a few pictures of them.


This type of deep black is always hard to photograph.


We bought the wheel lugs with the wheels and that included rubber valve stems and a chrome stem cover. I'm using a bent Q-Tip to hold the valve stem cover in place. The lugs are recessed.




The wheels have a tapered steel insert pressed in for the lugs to mate with. This helps the wheels last longer.




Chrome plated steel tapered lugs.

Because of the rules of the club we race with, we can't use the center caps. Also, we will need to machine the cap off of the lugs to allow our longer studs to pass through. As per our club rules, we have replaced the stock studs with longer studs. The studs must always be longer than the lugs. This allows for quick proof of full thread engagement.

VTO is a fledgling wheel company that is focusing on Vintage Racing Wheels and marketing racing clubs mostly.
http://vtowheels.webplus.net/index.html

We bought ours from Dave Patten of Futo Fab, who is a USA distrubutor of VTO wheels. Dave tells me he has a 510 he races.
http://www.futofab.com/

Racer Z

It's been a while, but we finally mounted some tires on our new VTO Retro-4 rims and were able to mount the wheels on the our Datsun 240z.

The rims are the VTO Retro-4 15x7 zero offset.
The tires are the Falken 912 225/50-15.
The lugs are not what came with the rims. We have racing studs that are longer than stock and had to use open lugs.

We drove the car around town a bit without problems and then a full weekend at Willow Springs Raceway without any issues. There was some concern that this rim/tire combination might rub or otherwise not fit right. We had no issues of any kind.

The car is a 1973 Datsun 240z that is mostly stock. (well, sort of...) The things we changed that might effect wheel rub or fitment are as such:
Energy Suspension polyurethane bushings all around.
Tokico Lowering Springs all around. This lowers the car one or two inches and stiffens the ride a bit. These are street class springs.
260z swaybars, front and rear. The front swaybars are identical, the 240z came without a rear bar.

The Retro-4 wheels are kind of heavy for racing purposes. They weigh in at 18 pounds each. I was hoping for 14 or 15 pounds.
They did perform well on the track though. We lowered our laps times by about 3 seconds since the last time at this same track. We used the same tire, brand, style and size as our last event for comparative purposes. No, these wheels did lower our track time. LOL We lightened the car by 130 pounds, added a LSD (limited slip differential) and added an adjustable proportional valve sense our last event.

The wheels look good on the car and I'm happy with them.

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jtessmer

Hey Racer Z. I'm currently working on converting a 78z to a vintage racer. I have only had it for a few days and i'm taking out the interior. I'd love some pics of the inside of your car. Just to steal some ideas...

Racer Z

Like a lot of race cars, it's a work in progress. These are resent shots my brother took to show me some work he did while I was sick. Not the best for showing general public, but it's all I got ATM.